In the fields requiring database management there is a continuing demand for integration and consolidation of information from diverse systems containing complementary information, and methods for the access thereof. This is a result of various forces at play including the relentless increase of system size and amount of data dealt with in single companies, as a result of agglomeration of smaller into larger companies, as a result of increasing demand for longer time periods being studied and greater detail of information stored over these time periods, and a result of smaller information systems being similarly incorporated into larger information systems.
Telecom, financial, and communications enterprises all feel this need as the basic technologies become more and more widely adopted and numbers of users for a given enterprise rise exponentially.
As will be well-known to one skilled in the art, the process of integration and consolidation of information from various sources can be very expensive in terms of manpower and time. The downtime involved can decrease productivity and the process as a whole carries certain risks of damaging data integrity, freshness, and security. These are critical issues for the current and future operation of many modern businesses and therefore there is immense pressure on the entity carrying out the integration/consolidation to perform flawlessly and rapidly, which, as will be appreciated even by the layman, are requirements at fundamental cross purposes.
Some of the difficulties inherent in consolidation concern synchronization issues between different systems that are being continually updated, perhaps asynchronously, in near-real time, or real time; incorporation of legacy systems using outdated and/or obsolete hardware and/or software; requirements to keep systems running while updating or replacing them; storage and speed problems encountered with systems that grow to immense proportions, and others.
There is thus a long felt need for systems that will answer such needs in a time- and space-efficient manner, rapidly, and modularly.